Special safety equipment is required to work on the electrical components of a gasoline-electric hybrid car. These linesman’s gloves at Wayside Auto Sales in Seekonk are good to 1,000 volts.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

SEEKONK Wayside Auto Sales is jumping into the future as an independent repair shop that services hybrid vehicles.

Not only that.

It also serves as the local training site for Worcester-based Automotive Career Development Center (ACDC), which conducts workshops in servicing hybrids as far afield as Chicago, Las Vegas and Toronto, as well as in Iceland and Germany.

“It’s growing. There are definitely more people asking (about getting hybrids serviced),” said Jeff Gouveia, who runs the family-owned shop on Fall River Avenue, along with his father, Al, and brother, Al Jr.

He said many owners believe only dealerships can service hybrids.

“There’s false information and misconceptions out there,” he said. “Independent repair shops can fix them.”

As concern about the environment is matched by concern about rising gas prices, electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles, such as the iconic Toyota Prius, are gaining in popularity.

But with heavy battery packs charged with over 200 volts, hybrids present a real problem for service technicians and emergency personnel who have not been trained to deal with dangerous levels of electricity.

“It’s new to us technicians, but not new to electricians,” said Al Gouveia Jr. “It’s new to the automotive world.”

“Sixty volts and one amp will kill you,” said Jeff Gouveia as he and Al Jr. demonstrated how to handle a 274-volt battery pack from a first generation Toyota Prius. (Second-generation Prius have 201-volt battery packs.)

The family owned and operated shop built and moved into its present 4,800-square-foot facility five years ago. Al Gouveia Sr., 55, Al Jr., 31, and Jeff, 29, work on the vehicles, while Al Sr.’s wife and Al Jr. and Jeff’s mother Carleen works the books and at the front desk. Both Al Jr. and Jeff trained at the New England Institute of Technology before joining their father, who spent 15 years with Chrysler before setting up shop 13 years ago.

The danger in servicing a hybrid is in handling the battery pack, which weighs about 100 pounds and requires two men to wrestle out of the vehicle.

While dry skin is fairly resistant to electricity, damp skin is not and the inside of the body even less so. A connection made through the hands of a technician or first responder and across the chest – and heart – would be fatal.

Putting on a pair of linesman’s gloves “that are good to 1,000 volts,” Jeff showed how a series of small modules are arranged in sequence.

“There are 38 modules in the battery with 7.2 volts in each module,” he said. Bus bars, or conductive metal strips, connect the modules in series, and he showed how these can corrode in the same way an ordinary household battery corrodes at the terminals.

Servicing the battery involves removing the bus bars and cleaning them, while replacing those that are corroded. Because it is labor intensive, the job costs about $1,500 but that compares with more than $3,000 to replace the whole battery pack.

Al Gouviea Jr. said a sensor light indicates when the car needs servicing and added that he had seen hybrids with well over 100,000 miles on the clock with original batteries that are fine so long as they are serviced. Other components that need to be checked include the cables, AC-DC converters and inverters.

The service training workshops are run by Craig Van Batenburg, who is founder and president of ACDC. Wayside has the first generation Prius and a Honda Insight in the shop, and they bring in two additional hybrid vehicles for the workshops.

Jeff Gouveia said each of the workshops, which run Friday through noon Monday (with an orientation dinner on Thursday) has 16 students assigned to teams of four students each. Friday is classroom work with Saturday and Sunday dedicated to hands-on training and Monday to a wrap up.

The cost is $2,199, which includes tuition, supplies and room and board at a local hotel, although the price can be adjusted for those who do not need the hotel room. ACDC is conducting three more seminars at Wayside Auto this year – May 15-19; July 10-14 and October 9-13.

Van Batenburg, 58, a dedicated environmentalist, started his hybrid servicing training seminars about four years ago.

“I love technology and I’m a tree hugger,” he said. “So hybrids make sense to me.”

He said there are currently standards for electrical wiring in vehicles to indicate three different charge levels: Black and gray reflect a standard 12-volt charge; blue a medium charge; and orange a dangerous charge of over 60 volts. He said the color scheme was established by General Motors but that no such standard exists for the emergency cutoff switch in terms of color, location or size.

Van Batenburg said this was a particular problem for emergency personnel at the site of an accident.

“(First responders) need it,” he said. “It’s ridiculous for fire marshals to have to listen to me for four hours or to have to consult an accident manual (for 17 different models). (A universal standard) will happen, but it should happen at the beginning.”

Jeff Gouveia added that hybrid badging also needs to be standardized so first responders know right away they are dealing with a hybrid.

“The badging is all different,” he said, citing a lower case “H” on the Lexus RX 400h and a green leaf used by Ford to apply not only to hybrid vehicles, but to other alter-

native fuel vehicles as well.

He said Providence Fire Department personnel who had come for training had told him that hybrids and side air bags made their job at traffic accidents particularly difficult – hybrids because of concern about being electrocuted and side air bags because they can be set off by specialized rescue equipment that can injure both rescuers and victims.

Al Gouveia Jr. said standardized emergency cutoff switches and hybrid badging along with training would “make it easier for everyone, safer for everyone.”

Van Batenburg said he has had students from as far away as Australia attend his classes and regularly holds workshops in Canada, where he said global warming is treated more seriously and there are more incentives, such as tax credits, for driving hybrids.

“Toronto is buzzing with hybrids,” he said. “It’s stupid not to own a hybrid (there) from a financial point of view.”

For more information go to www.auto-careers.org or e-mail Wayside Auto at waysideauto@comcast.net.

pelsworth@projo.com